“Arthur, when are you going out as a missionary?” asked Beth, at last.

“Not for three or four years yet.”

“Where are you going, do you know?”

“To the Jews, at Jerusalem.”

“Are you sure you will be sent just where you want to go?”

“Yes, for I am going to pay my own expenses.  A bachelor uncle of mine died, leaving me an annuity.”

“Don’t you dread going, though?”

“Dread it!  No, I rejoice in it!” he said, with a radiant smile.  “One has so many opportunities of doing good in a work like that.”

“Do you always think of what you can do for others?”

“That is the best way to live,” he answered, a sweet smile in the depths of his dark eyes.

“But don’t you dread the loneliness?”

“I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”

“Oh, Arthur!”—­she buried her face for a moment in the cushions, and then looked up at him with those searching grey eyes of hers—­“you are brave; you are good; I wish I were, too.”

He looked down upon her tenderly for a moment.

“But, Beth, isn’t your life a consecrated one—­one of service?”

“It is all consecrated but one thing, and I can’t consecrate that.”

“You will never be happy till you do.  Beth, I am afraid you are not perfectly happy,” he said, after a pause.  “You do not look to be.”

“Oh, yes, I am quite happy, very happy, and I shall be happier still by and by,” she said, thinking of Clarence.  “But, Arthur, there is one thing I can’t consecrate.  I am a Christian, and I do mean to be good, only I can’t consecrate my literary hopes and work.”

“Oh, why not, Beth?  That is the very thing you should consecrate.  That’s the widest field you have for work.  But why not surrender that, too, Beth?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I couldn’t write like ‘Pansy’ does, it isn’t natural to me.”

“You don’t need to write like ‘Pansy.’  She has done splendid work, though, and I don’t believe there is a good home where she isn’t loved.  But it may not be your place to be just like ‘Pansy.’”

“No; I want to be like George Eliot.”

A graver look crossed his face.

“That is right to a certain extent.  George Eliot certainly had a grand intellect, but if she had only been a consecrated Christian woman how infinitely greater she might have been.  With such talent as hers undoubtedly was, she could have touched earth with the very tints of heaven.  Beth, don’t you see what grand possibilities are yours, with your natural gifts and the education and culture that you will have?”

“Ah, yes.  Arthur, but then—­I am drifting somehow.  Life is bearing me another way.  I feel it within me.  By-and-by I hope to be famous, and perhaps wealthy, too, but I am drifting with the years.”